NIGHTWISH Bassist Marco Hietala On Poor Reviews For Imaginaerum Movie In Finland: “If You Present A Big Enough Target People Will Want To Throw Darts”

NIGHTWISH bassist Marco Hietala is featured in a new interview with Brendan Crabb at Australia’s Loud magazine. An excerpt is available below:

Photo: Ville Juurikkala

Q: You’ve also had the premiere of the Imaginaerum film in your homeland. Is there a worldwide release in the pipeline?

Hietala: “I think it’s possible that it’s going to be shown at like the Berlin International Film Festival in February, which will pretty much also set the tone for how it’s going to be released and if it’s going to be having theatre distribution in other countries. Because there you have got the people that are the right connections, and if they get interested there’s going to be a lot of things happening. Otherwise, we already have plans for the finished DVD and Blu-ray release later on in 2013. So far we’ve only had like a theatre premiere in Finland. It didn’t get that good reviews (laughs), but I also know that in Finland it’s pretty much a fact that, it’s a small country, six million people, and if you present a big enough target a lot of people will want to throw darts. From the reviews that I read; for instance, from the biggest daily paper in Finland, it seemed from reading (between) the lines you will really read that these are these over-ambitious guys playing their fantasy games and want to be bigger than ever. But I’m kind of waiting for the movie to get outside of Finland and then when I read the reviews from the guys who don’t live next to us, then I’ll start to believe what they say.”

Q: What’s it like seeing yourself on the big screen?

Hietala: “It’s kind of funny. We’ve already done a lot of things during the over a decade that I’ve been in the band and it all seems to fly by really fast. Unless you start to think about touring and albums and all these things, then you realise that you’ve actually been part of a group that has done a lot of things, and now there’s a whole movie as well. So yeah, I’m kind of pleased that we got into the financial situation in order to realise these kinds of things, really put them up there for people to see. I mean, we had some talks and meetings about this already when it was being planned and I was already back then, my position was that if we don’t do it, we’re going to be regretting it, so we better do it. So far, at least for myself, I’m pleased with the result. I think if you check out the movie with an open mind, it’s a chance to be a really good trip for you. It has the traditional movie things like acting, dialogue, a storyline and everything, but then you’ve also got this hybrid of having a lot of musical background in it. A lot of things are dependent on soundtrack and you get this kind of a hybrid, where you have a music video kind of vast scenery, but it leads on to another thing and another thing until you’ve got like a whole full-length movie there. That’s the way I see it myself.”

On November 10th, 2012 Nightwish held the premiere of their anxiously-awaited movie Imaginaerum at Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, Finland. The event saw the band perform with new singer Floor Jansen. Check out professionally-filmed footage by director Ville Lipiäinen of the track ‘I Want My Tears Back’ below: